My Brown Skin

I’ll let the reader decide what, exactly, my mindset was when I wrote this free verse masterpiece.

My Brown Skin by Hakim Kangsworth, Formerly Known as Larsen Halleck

The solar body rises and the flesh body stirs Shaking off leeting nocturnal bacchanals, labor begins Slaving, slaving, slaving, for aloof landlords The alabaster face of atrocity Denigrating and mocking and slurring yet feasting upon my brown skin All our myriad shades of beautiful brown, trampled upon by marble feet of oppression We drive the convoys that carry your totems of esteem, and dredge the cesspits of modernity Food springs forth from our hands, and waste is carried by those same hands Hands that have only done good, are incapable of committing violence Spat upon by illegitimate tyrannies, has always been my brown skin White skin has no business being here, white skin has no business being there This land and that land and all lands belong to the indigenous ones Indigenous peoples around the world, eternally bonded together By our brown skin Whiteness belongs absolutely nowhere, springing forth to slay and ravage The epitome…of illegitimacy Everything good that you claim to create, was made by us The golden-brown just rightness of celestial cookery A celestial mandate that is real unlike yours We take the worst abuses over six centuries But we remain strong Beloved parents from the four corners of the world Laboring under this land of plenty To give me the privilege of writing this verse Hands callused and muscle heaving Digging and planting and routing and hammering To give their children a better life All of them straining, all of us hoping To take our first step—together All together laboring towards that collective dream Of a world where we are all bonded By our glorious brown skin